The 'Family Guy' 150th episode and the return of 'The Boondocks': One of them was brilliant

Family Guy’s hour-long 150th episode began with a two-character piece that revolved around Stewie and Brian being trapped in a bank vault, then finished up with some memorable musical numbers from the show. The “regular” episode, “Brian and Stewie,” was both tedious, predictably vulgar, and, by the end, sentimental.

As the episode wore on, the discovery that Brian owned a gun he kept in the bank safe-deposit box led to a discussion of suicide, an admission by the usually flinty Stewie that he’d miss Brian if he were gone, and concluded with the baby falling asleep on Brian’s lap as the dog read to him from David Copperfield. Awwww…

Better were the musical moments. Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is a clever musical comedy producer, and set-pieces like Peter doing the Jerry Lewis mime number from The Errand Boy, and the Guy version of The Music Man’s “Shipoopi,” are pleasures to watch.

The Boondocks hasn’t aired a new episode since 2008, and so, in a brilliant stroke, the new season began with the ‘08 election of Barack Obama, cast as a documentary being made by a German filmmaker whose voice sounded an awful lot like director Werner Herzog, voiced by – well, whattaya know – Werner Herzog.

The half-hour, titled “It’s a Black President, Huey Freeman,” written by Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder, was a terrific parody of Obama-mania and a ferocious critique of all the hatred that has been directed against Obama. Warning; this clip contains strong language.

Placed in the Boondocks universe, Obama publicly condemned angry-kid realist Huey. Why? Because Huey is friends with Obama on MySpace, and Huey’s politics are far too radical for mass America, so Obama did the politically expedient thing. The episode played out with shrewd, nuanced satire. (Although will.i.am may not feel that way, after seeing the way his style was parodied.)